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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On October 09 2015 04:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I do not Helius X. It would behoove you to stop assuming people are ignorant or of lesser intelligence to you. I asked him to define it as he saw it. Not as it says on paper.
It is not unconstitutional to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals if they commit a crime. That is the problem we have. You commit a felony, you lose the right to vote. The same should be done with regards to firearms. Asking people to participate in a survey to better understand the saturation of firearms in america is unenforceable. You can't force anyone to comply with any laws. But people do because they try, about 20% of the time to look beyond themselves. Understandably, people who do not wish to volunteer said information, cannot and should not be punished. If you answer that you have 3 pistols and a box of ammunition for each, locked away securely behind lock and key - combination, then you seem like a responsible person. If you answer that you have 45 pistols, shotguns, semis, and rifles, some collectible, some for sport, and some for safety, you should be required to provide proof you are not mentally unstable, have them firmly secure and out of the reach of others, and can demonstrate sound firearms handling and safety techniques, you should be required to obtain a license to have that many provided that you submit to yearly checks for mental health.
How does someone prove they are not mentally unstable? And what prevents people from simply lying? Who pays for the mental health check ups?
Also, how do you plan to this through congress? And what happens if people don't comply?
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On October 09 2015 04:49 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
I do not Helius X. It would behoove you to stop assuming people are ignorant or of lesser intelligence to you. I asked him to define it as he saw it. Not as it says on paper.
It's pretty clear you're ignorant. Call a spade a spade.
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Yeah, i don't think the idea of "Ask people if they have guns, then punish those that say yes" is going to work very well.
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Wow it's crazy in D.C. NOLA is pretty crazy too accounting for literally 50% of gun homicides in Louisiana but not D.C. crazy!
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Okay, so this is your 2nd amendment, right?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
First, i'd say it's debatable if the people of the United States are a Militia, but i guess your law professors have talked this through alreay.
Second, every lawbook has a time when it's become obsolete. Even the constitution. The second amendment is from 1789, you are not fighting the english anymore. The constitution is not a holy book written by someone hearing the voice of a god and therefore can never be changed. It's manmade and it can become obsolete. I am not saying any politician will try or even succeed in it, but it's possible.
Third, let them own firearms. Take away their right to keep ammunition in the house. The second amendment does not specify the right to shoot intruders in your home. It does not specify the right to shoot weapons at all. It just guarantees the right to keep and bear them. So yeah, bear them in your house, shoot them only on the firing range or when you have a hunting licence. And then you abolish laws that guarantee you to get free after shooting someone on your lawn and offer to buy back all ammunition. Your criminals will break into the homes of people to steal their ammunition and sell them to the government. Problem solved.
I kid. I believe the weapon culture and the entitlement of the individual is so deeply routed in the american society, that a lot of people would give up their guns or their ammunition only over their dead cold hands, even if legislation would make it illegal to own a firearm or ammunition. Also your weapon lobby would never allow for such a legislation to happen.
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On October 09 2015 06:45 Broetchenholer wrote:
Okay, so this is your 2nd amendment, right?
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
First, i'd say it's debatable if the people of the United States are a Militia, but i guess your law professors have talked this through alreay.
I don't know if you've heard of this case but it's a good read if you're interested in this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
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On October 08 2015 11:33 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 11:11 oBlade wrote:
The guns already exist, though. You have to accept the starting conditions of reality. It's all well and good to say "Japan is safer than the USA" but "Be more like Japan" isn't really a plan that we can use right now to make the USA a better place. And while the majority of gun deaths in the USA are suicide, there are countries with fewer to no guns that have (significantly) higher suicide rates, including Japan and Korea, also India, even Iceland's rate is a little bit higher, could you imagine a more peaceful country than that? obviously in regards to suicide rates banning guns inst the end all. But im pretty sure that countries that have banned guns have seen a pretty solid (or at least significant enough to make note of) drop in their suicide rates. and some countries like south korea have really high suicide rates because of pressure and the hyper competitive nature of the country.
Yes, there are clear cultural factors behind the high rates of suicide in East Asia. Why does awareness of those factors disappear when the subject is a country with a high prevalence of guns? It takes for granted that you already know what causal links are eclipsing others.
On October 08 2015 11:33 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:here's the an old cnn article in the opinion section about suicides and guns. If I remember the it does cite data http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/24/opinions/yonkers-guns-suicide-rate/index.htmlIn 1996, in response to a mass shooting in Tasmania in which 35 people were killed, the Australian government responded by banning rapid-fire long guns, engineering gun buy-backs, tightening licensing policies, and enhancing restrictions to gun ownership. Gun-related homicide and suicide rates have declined sharply. Suicide by a firearm decreased to nearly half the 1996 rate by 2003. However, the rate of nonfirearm suicides did not increase during this interval, in this case debunking the idea that there would be a simple substitution of one suicide method with another.
This isn't a great conclusion, I feel. All else being equal, it may be that suicide is nonincreasing to begin with. Is that not a possibility? Rates of rape, violence, and murder have been going down, after all.
Here's the figures from the original paper that article is citing:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/figure/fig1/
The firearm suicide rate was decreasing to begin with. And there was a jump in non-firearm suicides when the law changed. In fact, the graph shows that non-firearm suicides had been on the rise until the new law. Could you riddle me a causal mechanism for that? It's an interesting situation with Australia but I don't think the data is that powerful.
On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 11:11 oBlade wrote:
The guns already exist, though. You have to accept the starting conditions of reality. It's all well and good to say "Japan is safer than the USA" but "Be more like Japan" isn't really a plan that we can use right now to make the USA a better place. And while the majority of gun deaths in the USA are suicide, there are countries with fewer to no guns that have (significantly) higher suicide rates, including Japan and Korea, also India, even Iceland's rate is a little bit higher, could you imagine a more peaceful country than that? I don't see why you're bringing up general suicide rates at all. Sure, gun numbers don't correlate to suicide rates. But reducing suicides and reducing gun violence are entirely separate things.
I'm suggesting that there are aspects of these issues that aren't quantitative - at least, not at the depth of clickbait analysis. There's lots of things that could be analyzed except that the statistics don't exist.
What's your reason for thinking there's nothing in common between suicide and gun violence?
On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Unless you're focusing on "reducing gun related suicides", which is an overly narrow and useless target group.
In what way? Gun related suicides are more common than gun related homicides in the USA.
On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:
And yes, Japan is an extreme that is hard to replicate due to their isolationist and xenophobic outlook. So maybe look at more comparable nations, like Australia, UK, Canada, Germany, etc. All of which have less guns, less gun violence, and lower suicide rates...and some of which have had much longer histories of war obsession and militarism than the United States.
Okay, I'm on Wikipedia right now. The USA is 12.1 per 100,000, Canada 9.8, Australia 10.6, UK 6.2, Germany 9.2. Those are your examples. I don't see that the USA's suicide rate is significantly higher than those countries, or at least definitely not in proportion to how many more guns/gun owners there are in the USA. The UK seems a tiny bit more of an outlier from that group, but whatever. For reference, Sweden is 11.1, Norway is 9.1, Finland 14.8.
Xenophobia is not really the reason Japan has almost no guns but the USA has so many. The difference is historical accident. And with respect to suicide, you wouldn't want to copy Japan in that way.
On October 08 2015 20:38 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 10:29 oBlade wrote:On October 08 2015 08:44 Broetchenholer wrote:
And then you have the studies that say, owning a weapon actually increases your chances to get shot in your own home. So no, owning a gun for self defense is not a good thing. It increases your chances of getting killed. This is mainly because there are 2-3 gun suicides for every gun homicide (in the USA). No offense, but you know that's bullshit. If two people have weapons and one is a burglar, the possibility that the situation escalates is way higher than if only the burglar is armed. Killing people is after all a way bigger crime than robbing people and shooting people is a lot easier when you get the feeling that the other side is trying to kill you. Most intruder want money, not your life and the few nutballs that actually want your life (which is probably a number low enough that in ten lives you dont encounter a single one on average) aren't gonna be threatened much by you having a weapon anyways. Gun vs gun in close combat gives you a 50:50 chance on average. So maybe you will shy away the intruder, but odds are that the situation that is chaotic to begin with (most burglars want to intrude when nobody is at home) escalates and these odds are way higher than that the intruder is actually trying to kill you to begin with.
No, I don't believe that's bullshit at all. The statistic varies every year, but there are about twice as many gun suicides as gun homicides in the USA. When you say having a gun in the house increases your chances of getting shot, it's true, but the greater part of the "gun-related deaths" rate you see quoted in the media is suicide.
It's all well and good to tell people to take classes, to be responsible, to not shoot people in their house when they don't know what the target is (i.e. when it could be your family), to brandish a gun in the defense of their home and not necessarily fire it unless necessary. But you seem to be saying you would be safer if someone burgled you with a weapon and you were unarmed. I don't know that you're being honest about how you would personally feel in that situation, but I think you at least see why people want the option. The truth is if someone breaks into your house and has a gun, you don't know what their intentions are among burglary, kidnap, rape, torture, or murder. You assuming that an intruder is a harmless armed burglar is, I'm sorry, purely academic.
On October 08 2015 12:43 Doodsmack wrote:
I don't know why we should stop at guns, why not make grenades legal for everyone? Everyone should be able to have 3 grenades on their belt, in my view. That's a much more reliable way of stopping a maniac. Besides even if grenades were illegal, psychos would still find a way to get their hands on them.
Grenades are a little bit legal in parts of the USA, although they don't really exist in circulation. That's kind of the point here. There aren't hundreds of millions of grenades in civilian hands already. It's not an issue. History didn't just start today and we "made" guns legal. There are hundreds of millions of them already. If you made the sale of new cars illegal today, the roads would definitely not be empty tomorrow.
Also, your snark about grenades more being reliable isn't grounded in reality, as you probably know. They're not directed weapons; they're explosives. You can't point a grenade at someone. Nobody is actually clamoring for new access to grenades.
Psychotic people do make improvised explosives, though, as happened in Boston recently, among other incidents.
On October 09 2015 04:25 Soap wrote:Half of Brazil Believes That 'the Only Good Criminal Is a Dead Criminal'We have very strict gun control though. To purchase a firearm one must be at least 25 years old, have fixed residence, lawful occupation, clean criminal record, declare effective need, and pass technical and psychological exams by federally accredited professionals. By an unfortunate coincidence, there are five times more violent deaths than in the US by population.
Soap has an interesting point also.
If you look at intentional homicide rates (not strictly firearm-related), there are about 100 countries with a higher rate than the USA (which is at 4.7). Now, some of those are probably close in statistical margins, but let's say 80 countries are doing worse (for example, Iraq is at #79 with 8.0).
And many of the countries I mentioned earlier with bad suicide rates have homicide rates lower than the USA (like India) or almost nonexistent (like Japan). It's interesting stuff.
The largest countries out of that list are like Brazil (the homicide rate is about 5 times the USA's as Soap says, despite strict gun control which I didn't know about), Mexico, and Russia, which I'm not an expert about so I'll just say they I don't doubt they at least have lower rates of gun ownership than the USA.
All the other countries are places like the Philippines, Bolivia, Nigeria, the Congo. Most countries are not big and rich like the one we usually talk about.
Now, you might want to say, those countries don't "count," they're not first world countries or whatever, they have various problems like poverty, crime, drugs, human trafficking.
My question is if someone accepts that poverty is the cause of crime/violence in the countries that top this list, is not poverty within the USA a leading culprit of violence there? Are there not other main factors at work, like poverty and education, rehabilitation, gang culture, that we do know how to solve when the political will exists? The USA might have half the world's civilian guns (the percentage of gun owners would be lower, that's more like 1/3 of the USA), but it doesn't have half of the world's homicides.
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I have seen that your supreme court decided that way recently. If it were that easy to overturn the second amendment, people would have succeeded already  But in the future this decision might be overruled, who knows.
@OBlade:
If you want to compare the crime rates and social environment of the USA and Brazil, go ahead. There is of course a correlation between poverty/social tension and crime. And of course the States should at first address the reasons for crime, because you can't compare the States and Germany either. Both are rich countries but our social problems are so much smaller then the problems the US face. But still, Brasil is on a completely different level, as is Mexico for example.
If you compare rich western countries, you get the best result.
And by the way, the suicide rate of the scandinavian countries is supposed to be high because of the long days and long nights. Sleep deprivement and stuff like that.
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i cannot believe how easily some people justify killing criminals simply because "he broke into my house". and then they actually talk about how the rest of us dont have respect for human lives. that is actually hilarious
the self righteousness, selfishness and downright power hungryness of some americans is astounding
i would actually put my annual salary on the fact that some americans probably buy guns and hope for an intruder so that they get to 'legitimately' kill someone. hes a murderer, but in the eyes of the law hes a 'law abiding citizen', right?
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United States42180 Posts
That's why you fire before they're on your property and then drag their body in. If you waited for them to make it into the house then you might not get your chance to roleplay Judge Dredd. You don't get so many chances so you have to make them count.
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On October 09 2015 08:15 evilfatsh1t wrote:
i cannot believe how easily some people justify killing criminals simply because "he broke into my house". and then they actually talk about how the rest of us dont have respect for human lives. that is actually hilarious
the self righteousness, selfishness and downright power hungryness of some americans is astounding
i would actually put my annual salary on the fact that some americans probably buy guns and hope for an intruder so that they get to 'legitimately' kill someone. hes a murderer, but in the eyes of the law hes a 'law abiding citizen', right?
some guy in montana tried this. He left his garage door open and some german exchange student wandered in and the guy shot him instantly. The good news is the guy actually got convicted of murder
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On October 09 2015 07:03 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:On October 08 2015 11:11 oBlade wrote:
The guns already exist, though. You have to accept the starting conditions of reality. It's all well and good to say "Japan is safer than the USA" but "Be more like Japan" isn't really a plan that we can use right now to make the USA a better place. And while the majority of gun deaths in the USA are suicide, there are countries with fewer to no guns that have (significantly) higher suicide rates, including Japan and Korea, also India, even Iceland's rate is a little bit higher, could you imagine a more peaceful country than that? I don't see why you're bringing up general suicide rates at all. Sure, gun numbers don't correlate to suicide rates. But reducing suicides and reducing gun violence are entirely separate things. I'm suggesting that there are aspects of these issues that aren't quantitative - at least, not at the depth of clickbait analysis. There's lots of things that could be analyzed except that the statistics don't exist. What's your reason for thinking there's nothing in common between suicide and gun violence?
Because the issue at hand is non-suicide related gun violence, which is still magnitudes higher than any other 1st world democratic nation.
Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Unless you're focusing on "reducing gun related suicides", which is an overly narrow and useless target group. In what way? Gun related suicides are more common than gun related homicides in the USA.
"Because the issue at hand is non-suicide related gun violence, which is still magnitudes higher than any other 1st world democratic nation."
Show nested quote +On October 08 2015 11:37 WolfintheSheep wrote:
And yes, Japan is an extreme that is hard to replicate due to their isolationist and xenophobic outlook. So maybe look at more comparable nations, like Australia, UK, Canada, Germany, etc. All of which have less guns, less gun violence, and lower suicide rates...and some of which have had much longer histories of war obsession and militarism than the United States. Okay, I'm on Wikipedia right now. The USA is 12.1 per 100,000, Canada 9.8, Australia 10.6, UK 6.2, Germany 9.2. Those are your examples. I don't see that the USA's suicide rate is significantly higher than those countries, or at least definitely not in proportion to how many more guns/gun owners there are in the USA. The UK seems a tiny bit more of an outlier from that group, but whatever. For reference, Sweden is 11.1, Norway is 9.1, Finland 14.8. Xenophobia is not really the reason Japan has almost no guns but the USA has so many. The difference is historical accident. And with respect to suicide, you wouldn't want to copy Japan in that way.
Yes. My point exactly. Gun numbers are a factor in suicides, but the numbers are not directly correlated. So there is no single solution that will solve suicide rates and gun violence, so stop conflating the two.
And xenophobia is not the reason Japan has no guns, but the fact that they have such isolationist culture and policies, and the fact that Japan is an island, makes that level of gun control hard to replicate for a nation that shares borders. Which is why it's much easier to compare a nation like Canada, which shares a wide, very open border with the US and still maintains a fraction of the gun issues.
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So, so far, we have three suggestions, a bunch of name calling, and...that's about it. No progress whatsoever since the thread began with the Oregon shooting. I suggest this is closed until the next shooting which should be soon. It's like clockwork.
Simberto, I didn't say punish people who answered that yes they own weapons. I suggested punishing anyone who violates a crime and they lose their rights to bear arms.
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On October 09 2015 13:09 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
So, so far, we have three suggestions, a bunch of name calling, and...that's about it. No progress whatsoever since the thread began with the Oregon shooting. I suggest this is closed until the next shooting which should be soon. It's like clockwork.
Simberto, I didn't say punish people who answered that yes they own weapons. I suggested punishing anyone who violates a crime and they lose their rights to bear arms.
If you're expecting "progress" from an internet thread on a forum called "Liquid", I think you need to double-check your expectations.
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On October 09 2015 13:26 WolfintheSheep wrote:Show nested quote +On October 09 2015 13:09 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
So, so far, we have three suggestions, a bunch of name calling, and...that's about it. No progress whatsoever since the thread began with the Oregon shooting. I suggest this is closed until the next shooting which should be soon. It's like clockwork.
Simberto, I didn't say punish people who answered that yes they own weapons. I suggested punishing anyone who violates a crime and they lose their rights to bear arms. If you're expecting "progress" from an internet thread on a forum called "Liquid", I think you need to double-check your expectations.
I'm not expecting anything. If you read the first sentence in the OP, the same thing has happened before. And being on Team Liquid forums discussing this has nothing to do with anything. I can guarantee the same amount of progress is being made in other more reputable forums as well, internet or not.
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What it did however do (at least for me) is give me some insight into why people think the situation is ok as it is. How useful that is is up to you.
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On October 09 2015 13:09 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
So, so far, we have three suggestions, a bunch of name calling, and...that's about it. No progress whatsoever since the thread began with the Oregon shooting. I suggest this is closed until the next shooting which should be soon. It's like clockwork.
Simberto, I didn't say punish people who answered that yes they own weapons. I suggested punishing anyone who violates a crime and they lose their rights to bear arms.
this is team liquid, not the us congress. its not like any suggestion we discuss here is going to actually have an effect on policy changes. were not politicians, so not sure what you want from a thread like this
in my opinion civilised discussion is good enough. it would be considered particularly successful if we actually managed to convince the few gun enthusiasts here to change their views.
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So no progress. It's like abortion laws. You can't change someone's mind on something that they hold a deep belief in. They might agree with some of the stuff you say, but they won't change.
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Zurich15317 Posts
On October 09 2015 00:02 Kaethis wrote:
Isn't German legislation for actually getting a gun incredibly sctrict though? I remember that you can't even own one of these airsoft guns without a license and getting a license requires both you being over a certain age and having gone through an extensive psych evaluation.
Depends on what incredibly strict means. In comparison to the US - sure. But that has more to do with German love for order and rules than guns specifically. Access to a driver license is also incredible strict in Germany. In fact, it's arguably easier (certainly less expensive!) to get a gun ownership license than it is to get a driver's license in Germany.
Requirements are, in short:
Necessity, acceptable reasons are: Hunting, sports, collecting
Age: 25yo or 18yo with evaluation passed
Proficiency: Passed exam, proof of regular exercise
In the most common case of recreational target shooting that would mean you have to practice regularly at the range (rule of thumb is about 15 practice sessions), and pass the proficiency exam to get your license.
What most people (in Germany) don't realize is that at that point you are free to get your AR-15, which many over here falsely believe to be illegal.
I have written about this before:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/241586-germany-vi-gun-ownership
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